Pupils at North Hertfordshire College have played their part in the latest Benslow Music production, Handel’s opera Semele.

The Main Theatre at the college’s Hitchin campus provides the venue for the show, with college students involved in creating the set and other technical aspects of the production on Saturday, April 14.

The two performances at 2pm and 7pm will follow an intensive five days of rehearsal by members of Benslow Music’s biennial Baroque Opera course, which comprises an orchestra of non-professional players of period instruments, a small amateur chorus, and an international team of hand-picked solo singers.

The cast is headed by French soprano Faustine De Mones as Semele while Japanese tenor Hiromitsu Maeda stars as Jupiter T.

The musical team is led by violinist Judy Tarling, cellist Henrik Persson, vocal coach John Flinders and keyboard player and director Julian Perkins, while the production is by restoration drama specialist Jack Edwards, assisted by young British director Deborah Cohen.

Tickets are priced at £12 and full-time students go free of charge with advanced booking.

As Hertfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership waits for an announcement on government funds which could be used to revamp Stevenage railway station and begin the transformation of the town centre, Stevenage MP Stephen McPartland has claimed it does not have the backing of millions of pounds of private funds it has suggested.